UNT center to train scientists

Photos courtesy of the University of North Texas Health Science Center

Rhonda Roby, associate director and project coordinator of forensic and investigative genetics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, shows how a section of the bone is cut to extract DNA.

FORT WORTH — Forensic scientists from
the University of North Texas Health Science Center will train Libyan
scientists to identify the human remains found in mass graves after the
uprising of 2011.

“It’s an immense project,” said Arthur
Eisenberg, chairman and professor of forensic and investigative genetics at the
health science center. “I’m not aware of a project that size to date. It’s
going to take years and years.”

Forensic anthropologists are still
trying to figure out the number of remains, but the count is estimated between
10,000 and 20,000, he said.

“How many people ultimately need to be
identified in Libya?” Eisenberg said. “No one knows.”

And the remains could be more than 40
years old because the people are believed to have gone missing during the
regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

“That poses additional challenges,”
Eisenberg said.

The UNT Center for Human
Identification’s involvement in the project began in the fall of 2012.

UNT has already trained several
scientists from Malaysia, Thailand, India, the Middle East, South Africa and
Mexico.

In 2010, the health science center
received a grant to establish the Center for Forensic Excellence to help train
DNA analysts from other countries.

The center offers four classes a year
and the classes are about a month long. Then the scientists go back to their
countries and train more scientists.

The Libyan project is being funded by
Repsol, a Spanish-based oil company, and Life Technologies.

The oil company donated $2.5 million to
the Libyan government for a laboratory.

Eisenberg said the facility is expected
to be complete by the summer.

If a country was left to develop its own
facility from scratch, it would take two to three years, he said.

The first four Libyan scientists will
come to the UNT Health Science Center near the end of the year to be trained on
the procedures and the equipment they will be using, Eisenberg said.

“The most important thing is the
reference samples,” he said.

A reference sample requires taking a
swab of the family members’ inner cheeks.

It takes two to three reference samples
per missing person, he said.

Eisenberg mentions a case involving a
17-year-old girl missing in New York. Years after her disappearance, the girl’s
niece, who never knew her aunt, gave a reference sample and the lab was able to
identify the missing girl, he said.

Right now, Libyan scientists are trying
to get families to give reference samples, which could be a challenge because
many Libyans are afraid of the government, he said.

Once the operation is set up in Libya,
probably sometime next year, two scientists from UNT will go there to make sure
everything is working properly, he said.

Since the Center for Human
Identification became operational in 2002, it has helped law enforcement
agencies as well as other countries, including Chile.

Rhonda Roby, associate director and
project coordinator of forensic and investigative genetics at the health
science center, received the initial request from the government of Chile.

Roby is known for her DNA work. She was
called in to help identify remains at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11
attacks.

She helped identify the remains of 258
firefighters from the World Trade Center.

A large portion had just donated to a
blood drive, she said, which helped experts identify them. Chile shipped the
remains and the reference samples to UNT to have its forensic scientists
identify them. The Center for Human Identification built the country a
database, Eisenberg said.

In Libya’s case, there is a mass of
bones to go through, which makes it a more difficult process, he said.

The scientists only take a small portion
of the bone because the goal is to give the remains back to the family intact.

Long bones in the arms and legs are the
best places to extract DNA, he said.

It takes between one and three months to
identify one person’s remains, Eisenberg said.

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